


The World is Ending (but you are safe)

by TheReluctantShipper



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cinnamon Bun Geralt, Cinnamon Bun Jaskier, Current Events, Ficlet, Fluff, Living that Quarantine Life, M/M, Yennefer is NOT a Cinnamon Bun but Does Have Softness In Her, the smallest bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23565013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheReluctantShipper/pseuds/TheReluctantShipper
Summary: - This is (obviously) a work of fanfiction. I don't own anything but the original characters. I don't claim ownership over the characters or storyline of the TV show The Witcher, no matter how grateful I am for them, which is hella.- Thanks to the Sister Husbands, who are my best friends in the whole world, and happen to be gracious enough to also beta most of my works for me. I don't know what I'd do without you girls, but I certainly wouldn't be doing this.- You can come see me ontumblrorTwitterif me sharing fan edits and bitching about writer's block floats your boat.- I come by any mistakes here honestly, but feel free to point them out so I can correct them.- *waves* Hi, Witcher fandom! I've only watched the TV show, but I absolutely adored it and I ADORE the fanfic about it, so I decided to jump on in! This is my first fic in the fandom, but I'm thinking it probably won't be the last.- Feedback is life.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 14
Kudos: 143





	The World is Ending (but you are safe)

**Author's Note:**

> \- This is (obviously) a work of fanfiction. I don't own anything but the original characters. I don't claim ownership over the characters or storyline of the TV show The Witcher, no matter how grateful I am for them, which is hella.
> 
> \- Thanks to the Sister Husbands, who are my best friends in the whole world, and happen to be gracious enough to also beta most of my works for me. I don't know what I'd do without you girls, but I certainly wouldn't be doing this.
> 
> \- You can come see me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thereluctantshipper) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TheReluctantSh1?s=09) if me sharing fan edits and bitching about writer's block floats your boat.
> 
> \- I come by any mistakes here honestly, but feel free to point them out so I can correct them.
> 
> \- *waves* Hi, Witcher fandom! I've only watched the TV show, but I absolutely adored it and I ADORE the fanfic about it, so I decided to jump on in! This is my first fic in the fandom, but I'm thinking it probably won't be the last.
> 
> \- Feedback is life.

“This is awful,” Yennefer snarls, stabbing the needle through the Aida cloth for what feels like the billionth time. “It’s boring and awful and I  _ hate it.” _

She doesn’t have to look up to see that Jaskier is rolling his eyes. “It is not,  _ you _ are just determined to be miserable.”

“It  _ is _ boring. And slow. And I don’t even  _ like it,” _ she snaps.

Jaskier meets her eyes through the webcam. “And what, precisely,” he says slowly, carefully, almost teasing, “would you be doing with your time, if not for this?”

She growls at him again, but she doesn’t have a comeback for that. She’s self-isolating like a good girl, working from home because Tissaia would hear of nothing else when news of the pandemic hit. She doesn’t have to like it, though, and she doesn’t have to be nice about this  _ stupid _ project her friend has talked her into.

Her ire has no effect on Jaskier, however, which is quite par for the course.

“Drop the feral act, Yen. You’re  _ fine.” _

And honestly, he’s never really been scared of her, which is probably one of the reasons she likes him so much.

She met Jaskier in college through Geralt, and she doesn’t know how they got to the point where they’ll video call one another during a global pandemic because the sound of Jaskier’s endless chatter and Geralt’s periodic grunts are more soothing than silence, but here they are. Almost ninety percent of the population annoys her to the point of considering genocide herself, but she misses being in their cramped apartment with them so much it makes her chest ache a bit, which just annoys her further.

_ Honestly. _

“Honestly,” Jaskier says in an unconscious echo of her thoughts, “cross-stitching isn’t that bad. It’s soothing.”

“It’s irritating.”

“Everything irritates you, and you should like it! Look how many times you get to stab something!”

She glares at the cloth. It’s supposed to be a wildflower motif, a gift for Triss to make up for all of the times she’s tried to cajole her girlfriend to break self-isolation and come over in the last few weeks. She despises it, but Triss goes nuts for this kind of thing, and there are few things on this stupid Earth that Yennefer wouldn’t do for Triss.

“It’s not the same.”

“Psh,” Jaskier dismisses, “you’re fine, and you know Triss will love it, you big cinnamon bun.”

_ “Jaskier,” _ she growls in warning, but he’s already waving her away, unconcerned.

“Oh, hush, now. No one here is frightened of you. Now, I have to go check on dinner, do you want to hang up or hang out?”

Something frightened and small curls itself into a tight ball in Yennefer’s belly. As much as she hates other people, being alone has  _ not _ been good for her. She gets lost in her head when she’s by herself, in her thoughts, in sharp memories of hissed insults, hurled fists, and being locked in dark places where no one came to let her out for  _ hours. _

Her heart thudding in her chest, she rasps, “Hang out,” and lets the  _ please, God, please _ hang in the air between them, unspoken.

Jaskier’s light eyes are warm and kind when he nods. “All right, but if it hangs up, call Geralt and have him plug my laptop in. I lost my charger. Well, no, I think he hid it because that’s the kind of thing he finds funny. I swear, he’s-”

He walks away, still talking, and Yennefer lets herself relax a bit.

It was Jaskier who reached out to her a week after she was laid off temporarily. He cited the need to hear something other than the “smattering of grunts and eight words a day” that he gets from Geralt, and maybe that’s part of it. However, Yennefer knows that Jaskier has always been remarkably adaptable. He likes being around people, he likes being alone, and he likes everything in between. So she knows, and he knows, that the only reason he suggested they start regularly video chatting, even if they weren’t actively having a conversation, was for her benefit more than his.

The knot behind her sternum could have been anger, fear, guilt, or gratitude, so she agreed to the stupid video calls, safe in the knowledge that she could always hang up if it got to be too much.

A few hours pass like that, peaceful in the fraught sort of way that accompanies being cooped up due to a worldwide pandemic. Sometimes they talk to one another, but more often they're immersed in their separate lives with just the comforting white noise of another living person as a backdrop. 

Late in the afternoon, Geralt gets home from work. He's not an "essential worker," per se, but the horses at the ranch he works at have to be cared for, and he volunteered to do it.

Yennefer smirks as she listens to Jask pester Geralt with questions about his day while simultaneously bullying him into taking his clothes off and into a laundry bag. Geralt grunts one-word answers when he answers at all. Jaskier, undeterred, ushers Geralt into the bathroom, babbling about a hot shower and sanitation and safety. Geralt, with what appears to be an indulgent expression on his handsome face, goes without argument.

She doesn’t really understand their relationship, even with as close as they all are. On the surface, the two of them are roommates and almost polar opposites. But she's been friends with Geralt for a very long time, and she doesn't quite recall the warmth he directs toward Jaskier ever being in his eyes for anyone else. Even to her, during their brief attempt at being something more than friends, before she realized she preferred women (one woman, with dark curls and a bright smile) and Geralt let her go gracefully. Jaskier, for his part, is much the same as he always has been, but he has become adept at interpreting Geralt's taciturn ways, and he seems to gravitate towards the other man, fluttering and chattering about.

She doesn't understand it, but she doesn't really need to, either, so she doesn't spend all that much time worrying about it.

It's just under an hour later, as she's sitting down with the frozen pizza she's made for dinner (she's always been rubbish at cooking) that she hears Jaskier speak slowly, tentatively, almost  _ nervously, _ which is so unlike him she can't help but listen in.

"Geralt?" The way his voice curls around Geralt's name has Yennefer's heart thumping in her chest for some reason.

"Hmm."

When she looks, the two of them are sitting at the minuscule table Jaskier insists they take their meals at with steaming piles of what looks like pasta in front of each of them. They're in the bottom left-hand corner of her screen, and she can't make out the expression on Jaskier's face, and Geralt barely even  _ has _ an expression, but the moment feels fraught, somehow.

"It… Well, with everything going on, you know, the virus and the pandemic and the self-isolation and the social distancing and whatnot, I mean, even today I-"

"Jas," Geralt says fondly. And there it is, the warmth and fondness he seems to save for Jaskier and Jaskier alone, softening his gaze and tilting his lips up into a hint of a smile.

"Ah, uh, right. Well, with all that's happening currently, you know, current events and-"

_ "Jas." _

"Feels a bit like the end of the world, doesn't it?" The words seem to spill out of him, almost too quick to understand.

"Hmm."

_ "Indeed. _ Anyway, I just think, since everything is so dire, you know, that it seems to be a time for… Confessions, of a sort, I suppose."

"Hmm."

"And, well, I think you already know, but with the current state of affairs, it feels right to say it out loud. To get it out there, right out into the open. I just think that continuing to hide is a self-defeating exercise and I am many things, but self-defeating is not one of them-"

"Jas-" Geralt's eyes are wider, a bit alarmed, but Jaskier isn't to be stopped now.

"- and I know that you might be upset, or you might want me to move out after the quarantine, but it simply must be said."

Geralt is silent, his dinner forgotten, and Yennefer is hanging onto every word.

"Geralt, I know that we are… What we are, and I would never want you to get the impression that it isn't enough for me, because it  _ is. _ But, well, as I said, it could very well be the end times, and I don't want any misunderstandings between us if… Well, if the worst were to happen." Jaskier takes a deep breath. "I'm in love with you. Quite desperately so. And you don't have to say it back, because I know that feelings give you hives, and it's possible that you don't even feel the same, but I-"

_ "Jaskier." _

It would be easy to mistake Geralt’s wide eyes for horror instead of the surprise Yennefer knows they represent. Jaskier knows him well enough to not make that mistake, she thinks, unless he’s confessing long-subdued feelings over dinner.

"... Well, I just, I didn't want to make you uncomfortable, but-"

"Jaskier," Geralt says again, soft,  _ "Jaskier." _

"I know that you might not feel the same, but I-"

"The world is not ending."

Yennefer cannot pretend to know what goes through Jaskier's mind when Geralt speaks, but his shoulders drop a bit, and his hands fall into his lap from where they were gesturing wildly in the air.

"Oh, yes, well, I-" Jaskier murmurs, his voice almost too soft to hear on the video chat. Yennefer thinks distantly that if her internet goes out right now, heads will roll.

Geralt's brow furrows. "The world is not ending," he repeats, as if it's significant.

Yennefer always thought that, even as bad at communicating his feelings as Geralt is, when the time came that he and Jaskier figured themselves out that he'd at least be able to do this much. He'd be able to pull the words from deep inside to tell Jaskier  _ something _ about how he feels about him, about how Yennefer knows he feels about him. Instead, she's watching with mute disgust as he fucks this up.

She watches, too, as Jaskier seems to rally. "Well, I wanted you to know, at least. It doesn't change anything, or it doesn't have to, but I'll feel better now that-"

His words cut off abruptly when Geralt reaches across the table to entangle their fingers.

"Jaskier," he says once again, his voice rough with emotion and the way Yennefer knows he has to fight to keep his thoughts in order when he has to talk about his feelings.

"Yes?" Jaskier asks breathily.

"The world is not…" Geralt turns to the side, growls, then looks back at Jaskier.  _ "My _ world is not ending, as long as… Fuck. As long as you are safe."

The way his jaw is bunching and tensing means that Geralt has run out of words, but Yennefer frankly cannot believe he got out as much as he did. Jaskier's surprised silence tells her that he's as surprised as she is.

She should have known it wouldn't last long.

_ "Geralt," _ he gasps, reverent and soft. He stands, pushing his chair back. Yennefer still can't see his face, just his back, but she can imagine it. His blue eyes wide and misty, a small, private smile on his face, just for Geralt.

She wrinkles her nose when Jaskier makes his way around the table and promptly plops into Geralt's lap, straddling him. Geralt's big hands land on Jaskier's hips and slowly slide up his back as Jaskier bends down to kiss him… Enthusiastically. 

Yennefer closes her laptop with a gentle  _ clack. _ The boys will be fine without her for tonight, and she has the strangest impulse to call Triss, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Yes, yes, I already used this prompt in another fic, but that was Destiel and this is Geraskier, so it's fine, it's fine.
> 
> \- Stay safe, stay home, and wash your hands, y'all.


End file.
